


A Traditional Christmas Fight

by kla1991



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Christmas Fluff, F/F, Gen, Holiday Fic Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:41:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22074211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kla1991/pseuds/kla1991
Summary: The Warehouse team is coping with the fact that their holiday traditions have been banned. Myka thinks Helena might have something in mind to make the day bright again.
Relationships: Myka Bering/Helena "H. G." Wells
Comments: 5
Kudos: 54





	A Traditional Christmas Fight

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Bering and Wells-mas 2019! This is an exchange gift for lady-adventuress on tumblr.

It was December twenty-first, and there was officially no blizzard heading for Univille, South Dakota. Pete kept insisting the weather could change at any moment, but Myka had resigned herself to the stark reality: they weren’t going to get trapped in the Warehouse this year for Christmas. They were going to have to celebrate the holiday with their families instead of their coworkers, like normal people. Steve didn’t seem to understand everyone’s disappointment—he was looking forward to seeing his mother—and Claudia was hauling Artie to Iceland to see Joshua, so her holiday wasn’t looking so bad, but Pete was sullen.

  
Myka had expected Helena to be disheartened as well, because she’d pulled the short straw and had to stay at the Warehouse during the holiday. Not that she had a family to go home to, but Myka had been seconds away from inviting her to Denver when Helena broke the bad news. It hadn’t seemed to really matter at the time, because they always got snowed in, but now...

  
“You don’t seem to be enjoying the celebration,” Helena whispered.

  
“It’s just really different, that’s all. I wanted your first Christmas back to be a traditional Warehouse bash, but Artie and Leena aren’t even here. Kind of a bummer.”

  
Helena put her hand on Myka’s knee, and Myka grasped it tightly. She wanted to reassure Helena that she still fit with the team, that she belonged where she was. Christmas had seemed like the perfect time to do that, what with all the eating and gift-giving and traditions.

  
“You know what’s really a bummer?” Pete said around a mouthful of chocolate. “I have to come up with all new games since Leena banned the pop guns fights.”

  
“I still can’t imagine a Christmas holiday involving guns,” Helena sneered.

  
“You’d be surprised,” Steve said. “It was actually really fun.”

  
“Until someone took out an entire tea set trying to jump over the coffee table,” Claudia growled.

  
Pete thumbed his nose at her. “It wasn’t that big a deal! I totally cleaned it up, you can’t even tell, but Leena acted like we were gonna knock the whole house down! Come on, flip me another coin.”

  
Myka missed the pop gun tradition, too, but Leena had probably been right about them knocking the house down. A lost foam ball had destroyed a vacuum cleaner a couple years ago, and, despite Pete’s insistence he’d fixed everything, his tea set debacle had wreaked havoc on the hardwood floor.

  
Myka ran her toe over a deep gash in the board in front of her while Claudia unwrapped a chocolate quarter and flipped it into Pete’s mouth.

  
“Uh, heads!” Pete slurred, his tongue still sticking out.

  
Myka looked at the chocolate coin, its badly-stamped eagle visible. “Tails. I told you you couldn’t tell which side was up.”

  
“One more try!”

  
“Dude, you’ve eaten half the bag. I’m calling it,” Claudia said.

  
Helena pushed her hair back from her face and cleared her throat.

  
“If this is all,” she said, glancing among the gathered agents, “I’d like to propose an outing. To the Warehouse?”

  
“You wanna work on Christmas?” Pete whined.

  
“Technically it’s not Christmas,” Steve pointed out. “Artie and Leena didn’t even take the day off.”

  
“I thought we might bring a bit of cheer to them,” Helena said.

  
Myka didn’t need to see Steve frown to spot the half-truth. Helena’s eyes were sparkling, and her head was cocked at an angle that said she was impatient to get her way. She’d stayed late at the Warehouse last night, and the day before that, she’d been thumping around in the attic of the B&B.

  
“I’ll go if you put on those felt antlers,” Myka said.

  
Helena rolled her eyes and shoved the antlers on her head with a beleaguered groan. “Sufficient?”

  
She held her exasperated pose while Claudia took a picture. She was definitely up to something.

  
Pete ate cookies out of the box Steve tried to pack to bring to the Warehouse, and Claudia re-filled two stockings with candy, oranges, and party poppers while Myka and Helena shoveled off a car to drive in.

  
“I’m sorry Pete’s so sulky on your first Christmas back,” Myka said.

  
“He just needs something to lift his spirits. We all do.”

  
Myka ripped the driver’s side door open, sending an avalanche of snow into the seat, and climbed in to turn the car on. Helena brushed snow off the adjacent window, but it was mottled with ice. She couldn’t see Myka from here.

  
Not that there was anything to hide from Helena. Even if she weren’t the one person who knew Myka better than anyone else, she’d heard the shouting match Myka had had with her father on the phone.

  
Myka had tried to be nice. When she’d heard he had fallen off a stepladder and torn his rotator cuff washing the store windows by himself, she’d set aside her anger and called to ask how he was feeling. When he’d growled and snapped about not being too old to do things by himself, she had tried to comfort him, saying he never had to do things by himself. There were people who loved him, people who cold help him. Some of them lived three hours away, ready and willing. When he’d scoffed that she didn’t even come home for Christmas, she hadn’t reminded him what the weather had been like these past several winters, only promised that she’d be there this year, come hell or high water.

  
“I’ll even bring the pop guns Pete bought last year. It’ll be—”

  
Fun. It would have been fun, if Dad hadn’t spun out into a rant about the absolute ban on guns of any kind in his home, and how could she possibly think he’d enjoy such a viscous activity, even if he could hold a gun with one good arm?

  
“I was going to ask a friend to modify one for you, but that was before I remembered I can’t do a single thing without you picking it apart and finding something that’s fundamentally wrong with both my idea and me as a person! You never think about anyone but yourself! Do you have any idea how upset Mom was when she told me you fell? Do you have any idea what could have happened to you? Does it really not affect you in the slightest that you could have—”

  
Helena had peered in through Myka’s open bedroom doorway then, and Myka had taken a deep breath. She took another one now.  
Helena was here. She was safe and steady, and she had something up her sleeve. Christmas wasn’t going to be a total loss.

  
Myka got out of the car and went back to scraping ice and snow, admiring Helena’s efficiency instead of basting in her own misery. She was particularly impressed when Helena managed to knock the reindeer antlers off her head and "accidentally" bury them in the snow. The rest of the team tromped out of the B&B as few minutes later and piled into the car.

  
The Warehouse, when they all entered, was silent. Neither Artie nor Leena was in the office, the computers are were sleep mode, and even Trailer’s bed was empty. Myka was peering out the window into the vastness of the Warehouse floor when Artie’s Farnsworth blared. Everyone jumped, and Helena, who had been poking around behind the spiral staircase, banged her head on the bottom of a step and swore.

  
Myka comforted her automatically, petting her hair and squeezing her arm, but she was suspicious. Was this not part of the plan?  
Claudia answered the Farnsworth call.

  
“Thank god you’re here,” Leena said. “I’m in the B&B.”

  
“That’s where we just came from,” Pete grumbled.

  
“Not that one,” Leena said. “The other one. And someone boarded up the exit.”

  
Myka saw the alarm dawn on Pete and Claudia’s faces the same way it must have been on hers. Steve looked confused. Helena looked... alert. Possibly excited.

  
“Where’s Artie?” she asked.

  
Leena rolled her eyes. “Wouldn’t that be nice to know? I’ve been in here forever, calling the Farnsworth and not getting an answer. Can you all come down here? I think it’s going to be a team effort to get me out of here.”

  
Myka relaxed a little. If this were an emergency, Leena would send some of them to check on the gooery and have Claudia monitor the computers for trouble.

  
Helena straightened a little, careful of the spiral stairs, and said, “Let’s go, then.”

  
“Yeah,” Myka agreed. “Let’s go.”

  
Claudia grabbed a crowbar and, for some reason, a blowtorch. Steve rounded up several pairs of neutralizer gloves, which everyone dutifully put on. In the interest of both playing along and an abundance of caution, Myka snatched a pair of protective glasses off Artie’s desk before leading the charge.

  
Leena’s B&B loomed large in the center of an area intended for household artifacts, two aisles over from most of the other paintings. The lights were on in every room, bright enough to make the house seem occupied but not nearly as warm and welcoming as the real thing. Myka slowed as she approached, suddenly wracked with doubt. What if this wasn’t a joke? What if something was really wrong?

  
Helena loped past her, her stride long but unhurried. What if she was running headlong into danger, and Myka wasn’t there to protect her? That spurred Myka forward. She burst through the door, ready to shove Helena out of the path of whatever awaited them inside.

  
There was no immediate peril. The house was as silent as the office. Pete nearly knocked Myka to the floor when he tripped on the threshold, which was slightly higher here than at home.

Claudia lit her blowtorch and shouted, “Rescue squad in the house!”

  
No one answered.

  
“Leena?” Pete called.

  
Everyone leaned in, tiptoeing through the living room as they listened. At first, there was no answer. Then Myka heard the faint wheezing of a leaky pressure valve. She knew that sound.

  
When the coat closet burst open, she ducked, and the first foam ball that popped out of the gun hit Steve in the ear.

  
“Agents!” Artie bellowed, pop gun raised. “Find your weapons!”

  
Leena poked her head out from behind a chair and added, “They’re mostly under the furniture,” before she shot Pete in the chest.

  
Pete whooped with joy.

  
The first thing Steve did was take Claudia’s blowtorch away, but everyone else dove for the nearest possible source of arms. Myka slid on her back under the couch, protected from Artie and Leena’s blows while she searched. She found nothing.

  
“Here, love,” Helena said. When Myka looked out, Helena was holding one of two pop guns out for her.

  
The wheezing and popping stopped for a second, and Artie shouted, “Reload!” at the same moment Pete yelled, “I got one!” and began firing wildly. Myka pulled Helena under the couch with her and started priming her weapon to fire.

  
Amid the squeals and laughter, there was the distinct sound of pottery shattering. Leena had definitely been right to ban these toys in the house.

  
“You planned this,” Myka said.

  
Helena grinned. “I did. I also swept the entire place so there wouldn’t be any cobwebs under here, but it appears I missed one.”

  
Myka looked over and saw Helena glaring cross-eyed at a wisp of dusty thread clinging to her forehead. She wiped it away with a tender hand.

  
Helena kissed her palm, then put a bit of distance between them and shot her square in the tit.

  
“Happy Christmas, my darling.”


End file.
